


ortzeitnamen

by Contra



Category: X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Deals with canon topics esp trauma, Gen, so warning for that
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-12
Updated: 2020-07-12
Packaged: 2021-03-05 06:40:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25229974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Contra/pseuds/Contra
Summary: grief is made of namelessness. namelessness and placelessness, and for the entire rest of his life, anonymity will be both what erik is running from and what erik is running towards. (or, Erik doesn't know his birthday)
Relationships: Erik Lehnsherr & Charles Xavier, Erik Lehnsherr/Charles Xavier
Comments: 1
Kudos: 15





	ortzeitnamen

**Author's Note:**

> There needs to be way more fic dealing with the fact that Erik is a Jewish man whose native language is German tbh...
> 
> Also, and this is important, it's not pronounced "Len-sherr". It's "LAYNS-herr."

you're not sure when you become erik lehnsherr, precisely.

  
you're still max eisenhardt when the forger hands you the pile of documents, you can see at least two spelling mistakes, his native language is yiddish, not german, but it doesn't matter. it's not like the soviet soldiers on patrol here can read german anyway. 

  
you're still max eisenhardt the first time you hand them over. the border guard glances at the identification card for approximately two seconds - there are not enough people illegally immigrating into east germany to warrant much caution and the borders here are young - then he nods and lets you through. your hands remain completely steady, you've learned to lie like this, you've learned way worse than this, in the grand scheme of things, this part probably doesn't even matter.  
there's still a part of you shaking, inside.

  
after that, you don't know.

the person who buys his first ersatzkaffee in berlin is completely nameless. this brown, disgusting brew is a war product, it doesn't taste anything like childhood, also this time is the first time you're in germany and old enough for coffee anyway.

you're what, fifteen?

berlin isn't anything like you remember düsseldorf, then again it's also not much like pre-war berlin. it's early march 1946, so you might actually be sixteen now. you close your eyes and sit down on one of the endless piles of rubble that line every street here.

it's not victory, it's not revenge, it's just survival. or well, whatever is left of it.

you're pretty sure your birthday is in spring. you have faint memories of it, the little tin soldiers you got for your sixth birthday, there was cake, you dreamt about this cake in the camps, it used to be the most important day in the world.

one day in the ghetto, your mother woke you up and told you, "it's your birthday, max." you were surprised, because there used to be a countdown, almost. max, your birthday is next month. max, your birthday is next week. max, your birthday is tomorrow. and now, just like all the rest of your life, it had simply arrived without warning.

but mama sounded happy. this was the first time you'd heard her sound happy in a long time. somewhere, she had managed to hide half a bar of chocolate. that was your birthday meal. it was spring.

you also distinctly remember not knowing what date it was. you hadn't left the house in almost three months, because your mother had been terrified that you'd get taken away along with all the other children. the passage of time was indeterminable and inconsequential. you could have asked her, but that would have admitted having forgotten your own birthday. neither of you, you think, would have been able to handle that.

in those days you could hear people screaming outside at all hours when they were being herded to the deportation places. your measure of time was that you and mama hadn't eaten in three days.   
maybe that actually was your birthday. or maybe your mother had simply not managed to justify to herself holding onto the last little bit of food any longer, and she had given up saving for days neither of you might even be alive to see. three days are a long time on an empty stomach.

that was the ultimate camp lesson. the chocolate didn't fill your stomach. it tasted heavenly though, and that made that day different from all the other days.

so it didn't matter that you have no idea what the actual date was. in the calendar of your life, it was three days after the last time you had eaten, and two days before deportation.

in berlin, 1946, you're alive and you pull out your fake documents, your erik lehnsherr documents and you try out the name in your mouth.

erik leeeehns - herr, it tastes like cheap muckefuck, at the same time it sounds more dignified than you're feeling. on your identification card, it says erik lehnsherr's birthday is the 3rd of March 1930, the forger must have used the date he printed up the papers. it's fitting, you think.

in four years, that is the date you will put on your american immigration papers.

In fifteen, Charles will throw you a surprise party to celebrate at the mansion in Westchester.

You have no idea where he even got the date from, because you have never mentioned it, you have not exactly led a birthday-celebrating life, and so he cannot have gotten it from your thoughts. Your CIA file, then?

Mystique is there and Hank and all the others, and a big fucking chocolate cake with candles on it and you have absolutely no idea what to do. Heeeeeeeeey, how old are you now? Scott shouts-screams into your ear, he's drunk and the music is loud.

You will laugh and say, fifteen.

And he will think it's a joke.

It will be.

there's a certain geography to grief. new york will always have a slightly different hurt than berlin than poland.

you go back to düsseldorf twice. once is in 1947 and you have to cross the sector borders multiple times. this is you, nameless.

the papers you show at every crossing to different soldiers from different countries are definitely, undeniably fake. but there's no reality underneath them, no big lie that they are covering up.

max eisenhardt is dead.

you recognize the street where you grew up, except you grew up elsewhere. you recognize the corner shop. you recognize the streetcars, though they are rarely running, the tracks are damaged or sold for scrap.

you recognize faces even, in the crowd, but they are as nameless as you are.

(only, a voice in your head says, they have papers and apartments and families to go back to. only, if somebody were to stop them with a rifle in his hand, they would have a convincing story of how they got here.  
only, they are not dead and you are.)

the back wall of your house is the last one standing. half the street has been bombed out. there are chalk names written on it, this is the custom, names and addresses, and sometimes just - _tot_. You think you recognize Gerda Maier, or at least there's a picture in your head of a big old woman who wore shapeless dresses and smelled of vinegar. You don't know the address she gave as a contact and you have no desire to find out. Most of the names you don't know at all, they must have moved in after.

For a second, you try to picture it: this house as it exists in your memory (darker, bigger than it probably really was, but all you remember is vague and distorted and uncertain) and people living in it while you were in the camps, just living here in this very house, in this very street. You can't do it.

Instead you take another piece of chalk and write "Edie, Jakob, Max Eisenhardt - tot" After a second, you add ", Auschwitz."

You pick up one of the stones that used to be your house and try to imagine that it was once part of your bedroom, your kitchen. All it is is a stone.

Quietly, you slip it into your pocket as you leave - this is the opposite of a grave.

By the way, happy birthday, old friend, Charles says. You're both in your late seventies. It's the 21st of march. You're sitting in his office at the School, having coffee, playing chess and it's the kind of day that you wasted your life instead of having.

My birthday is on the 3rd, you say, because he used to know this. He congratulated then, too.

He looks at you and the two of you can have these conversation only because you're both, in your way, dying. It was in the files we found with Shaw, he says. You were born on the 21st.

A part of you knew all those years that there must have been somewhere where you could have looked it up.

You didn't.

He senses something in you that is something else entirely, though not unrelated to grief.

I know these dates don't matter to you, he says.

They don't.

I just thought you should know.

You're in your late seventies, which has made you gentler than you ever were at sixteen.  
There once was a woman named Edie Eisenhardt, who would not recognize this old man if he stood in front of her, who died decades ago and younger, who would only know him by a name that is buried. This day mattered to her.

There's power in remembrance.

the camps are anti-places. they are places of no name and no time and nowhere.  
you don't exist here, except for the inexplicable fact that you do.

The second time you're in Düsseldorf, you're firmly Erik Lehnsherr, and it's a mission. There's intel that the CIA might convert one of the Army facilities here into a Mutant prison, these kind of things are easier if they don't happen in the mainland, certain geographical conclusions are reached unanimously, across time.

Your face was stone when you first heard about it. But of course, in the end, it is just one more thing that is there to be done. You try to tell yourself that it is a city that Erik Lehnsherr has never seen, but that's a lie. You have killed people from here in Argentina. You are Erik Lehnsherr. You've been here before.

They send Charles to stop you.

"I'm sorry, Erik," and the facility is right off the Kö of all places.

None of your comrades know anything about this city. Of course, neither do you, just contextless pictures of your mother in her dark brown wool coat and your shiny new leather shoes, and the day they put up the flags everywhere.

But Charles knows. "I'm sorry, Erik," and he says it roughly five thousand times and more importantly, he doesn't stand in your way as you blow up the compound, with 53 agents still inside.

Let's go, he says afterwards.

Where? You ask, because you are in a world that has no places.

And he says,

home.


End file.
